Grow Old With Me! Future Directions of Race, Age, and Place Scholarship

Abstract

This article reviews current theories of age and place to demonstrate a more inclusive perspective in sociology that considers race, age, and place. Scholars who study age have advanced our knowledge about what place means to old people or how environment operates in an oppressive way to aged bodies. Likewise, race scholars have advanced our knowledge about the ways oppression and White supremacy are rooted in place. Yet the two bodies of literature do not inform one another, and there are potentially dangerous gaps in our knowledge that contribute to oppression. The result is age scholarship about environment that lacks a critical race perspective and race scholarship on place that ignores the oppressive conditions of age. By reviewing these pieces, I argue that scholars must inform themselves of the ways in which we overlook important analyses and may potentially contribute to our own ageism.As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to present some very early findings of my dissertation research about age and place at the Midwest Sociological Society (Byrnes, 2007). During the question and answer period, an old woman, a Black old woman, and distinguished professor (ashamedly, I do not remember her name), remarked (and I paraphrase), I think this is the first study I have seen about old black men that did not problematize them as a body of diseases or criminals. They are a real group of people with very ordinary lives, desires, and dreams: nice work.Grow Old With Me! 909